FEDERAL TEAM BEGINS AIDS INVESTIGATION

Federal investigators arrived in Palm Beach County this week to look for reasons why the small agricultural town of Belle Glade has the highest incidence of AIDS in the nation.

The three-member team from the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta spent Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday in Belle Glade examining medical records of the 31 residents who have contracted acquired immune deficiency syndrome, the county Health Department said.

The team also is expected to ask some of the 20,000 residents of Bell Gladeto volunteer to take blood tests to see if they have been exposed to the virus thought to cause AIDS and to answer questions for a health survey.

AIDS is an incurable disease that disables the body's immune system, leaving its victims prey to many infections. More than half the people in Belle Glade who have been diagnosed as having AIDS already have died.

AIDS is most frequently transmitted through sexual contact or through the use of contaminated needles by drug abusers, but county health officials have been unable to determine why some Belle Glade residents got the disease.

The federal investigators will try to trace the sexual contacts of each AIDS victim in Belle Glade to try to find out how the disease was spread.

Some researchers also have speculated that the squalid living conditions and mosquitoes in Belle Glade could have contributed to the spread of the disease, but most authorities have discounted the theory.